Dover and the Claret Tappers

went straight to the meat of the problem. ‘Who is it?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘You’re my Number One suspect, laddie!’
‘Me, sir?’ To his dismay MacGregor saw that Dover wasn’t joking. ‘But I wasn’t even here, sir!’
Dover picked up his second rum and peppermint. ‘And that’s just where you were so clever, isn’t it? You manufacture yourself a nice little alibi just when it’s most needed. You weren’t stupid enough to have me kidnapped while you were here, were you?’
There are some occasions when argument is a pure waste of breath and MacGregor could see that this was one of them. For his own peace of mind, though, he was anxious to get the needle of Dover’s thought processes out of this particular groove. ‘In the first place, sir,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t dream of being involved in anything so dreadful, as you very well know. And, in the second place, how could I possibly have known in advance that on that one particular night you would be working late and not leaving the Yard until eight o’clock? It’s never happened before, sir, not in all the years I’ve known you. And, in the third place . . .’ MacGregor hesitated. Surely he’d got a third place, hadn’t he?
‘And in the third place?’ echoed Dover, looking roguish and waving his now empty glass suggestively.
MacGregor bowed to the inevitable. ‘Rum and peppermint again, sir?’
The pub had been filling up and customers had begun to move away from the bar to sit at the tables. Seats were soon at a premium and Dover was several times obliged to repel intruders who thought they could come and sit at his table just because there were three empty places there. It didn’t take much to put them off, of course. Usually one look from Dover and one look at him were more than enough. When they weren’t, a growled ‘bugger off!’ speedily completed the operation.
‘Sir,’ – MacGregor came back with yet another rum and pep – ‘why were you working late on Tuesday night?’ This was very tactful because, like everybody else in Scotland Yard, MacGregor had heard the joke about oversleeping.
Except that it wasn’t a joke.
It was the rum that must have made Dover careless as he was usually at pains to preserve his image. ‘I dozed off!’ he admitted with a boozy snigger. ‘Mind you, I’d had one hell of a day and what with having to muck about till six o’clock just to spike old Brockhurst’s guns. . . Well, I just closed my eyes to rest ’em for a couple of minutes and it was bloody five to eight when I came to.’
‘What time did you doze off, sir?’
‘How do I know? What does it matter, anyhow?’
‘Well, we’ve still got this business of an informer inside the Yard, sir, tipping the rest of the gang off. How could he even suspect that you were going to be so conveniently late that evening?’
‘Second sight?’ asked Dover, trying to be constructive.
‘If you could just try and remember even approximately what time you dozed off, sir, it might help.’
Dover chose to take offence at MacGregor’s wheedling tone. ‘Well, I can’t remember!’ he snapped. ‘So that’s that, isn’t it? All I know is that it must have been some time after the girl brought me the tea.’
MacGregor had to count up to fifty this time. ‘What girl was that, sir?’ he asked calmly, though his nerves were still jangling with the shock. ‘This is the first time you’ve mentioned her.
Dover shrugged off the reproach. ‘Don’t blame me, laddie! I’d have told you about her quick enough if you’d asked me. ’Strewth, there’s nothing mysterious about her. She just came into my room round about half past four, carrying a little tray with a cup of tea on it and some biscuits. She said the Assistant Commissioner had ordered it but then he’d gone out before she’d brought it. She said she didn’t drink tea herself and, rather than let it go to waste, she’d popped in to see if I’d like it.’
‘And you did, sir, of course.’
‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth, laddie!’
‘Then what happened, sir?’
‘Nothing happened!’ Dover was growing irritable under this merciless cross-examination. ‘She pushed off and I drank the tea and ate the biscuits.’
‘And fell into a deep sleep, sir?’
For once in his life MacGregor got Dover’s full attention. ‘Hell’s teeth, d’you think it was doped?’
‘Well, it’s a possibility, isn’t it, sir? I mean, didn’t it strike you that the whole incident was a bit fishy?’
Dover scowled. ‘Why should it?’
MacGregor stared deep into his glass of pale ale. ‘The Assistant Commissioner’s room is two floors below ours, sir.’
‘So?’
It was at moments like this that MacGregor wondered why he’d ever volunteered for C.I.D. in the first place. ‘It’s rather unlikely, isn’t it, sir, that this girl, whoever she is, would wander halfway over New Scotland Yard just to get rid of an unwanted cup of tea?’
‘And the biscuits,’ Dover pointed out. ‘I see what you mean, though.’ A lesser man might have been tempted to attribute the girl’s unusual behaviour to his own fatal charm, but Dover had few illusions on that score. He preferred to defend himself by attacking his sergeant.
‘Course, any fool can see it was a bit peculiar now, seeing it with bloody hindsight. It’s a different kettle of fish when you’re on the spot trying to sort things out at the time.’
MacGregor couldn’t see any future in pursuing that line of argument. ‘You woke up about eight, sir? Did you leave the Yard immediately?’
‘You can bet your bloody boots I did!’ said Dover, astonished that even MacGregor was fool enough to ask such a question.
‘Did you wake up on your own, sir, or did something rouse you?’
The spectacle of Dover trying to think was one to make strong men tremble. ‘The telephone rang,’ he said at long last. ‘Yes that’s right! The phone rang.’
MacGregor’s head came up with a jerk. ‘Did you answer it, sir?’ Dover frequently reframed